


In Which Nastya Is The Narrator Of The Deaths

by nonbinary_frog



Category: The Mechanisms (Band)
Genre: Dissociation, dttm spoilers, nastya's pov, please tell me if i should add more tags, the ending of the universe, the major character deaths are their deaths in DTTM
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-22
Updated: 2020-07-22
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:54:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25434967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nonbinary_frog/pseuds/nonbinary_frog
Comments: 14
Kudos: 46





	In Which Nastya Is The Narrator Of The Deaths

Nastya doesn't know how long it’s been since she went Out. Doesn't know how long she has floated frozen through space. How long between when she left Aurora and when she crash landed on some nameless planet. She lies on the ground as feeling slowly returns to her frozen limbs, and with it, pain. Pain of metal blood slowly and painfully starting to push its way through long-frozen veins, yes, but also another sort of pain.   


Pain that sits sharp and hollow and empty in her chest. Pain that twists in her stomach and pulls tears from her eyes. Tears that feel like burning as they slide down her frozen skin.

Nastya doesn't know how long she cries for, but when it finally stops, all she feels is hollow. Hollow and empty and tired.   


She buries the last original piece of her love under a tree that she doesn't know the name of on a planet that she doesn’t know the name of in a star system she doesn't know the name of. 

She decides she should seek out the others. Her family. She doesn't know why she decides to, only that she is drawn to do so. The same way they all were drawn to stories.   


And so she goes to find them.   


As you might expect, it takes a long time.   


She finds Jonny first, in a bar on some backwater asteroid, getting in a fight. That's not unusual for Jonny. What is unusual is the way his laugh sounds when the blade goes into his heart. What is unusual is the fact he doesn't get back up. Not even when the bar is closed and empty, and everyone but Nastya is gone. He doesn't get up when she kicks him in the ribs with her metal toed boots. He doesn't get up at all.   


**~~_he isn't getting up, he isn't getting up, he's my brother why isnt he getting up, he cant be dead, not really, none of us can really die, why isn't he getting up_ ~~ **

_ Well, _ thinks Nastya,  _ he seemed happy enough to die. I should probably keep looking for the others. _ She doesnt feel the grief as strongly as she expects to. She hardly feels anything at all.  _ He was my brother, _ she thinks, but still her heart is hollow. And so she moves on. Not speaking, not feeling. A ghost.   


One by one she finds the others, waiting and watching until the end. She’s not sure why she keeps seeking them out, as even if she finds them alive she does not speak to them. She only waits, watches, and remembers.    


She finds Marius on board the Aurora. She watches, a ghost in the vents as he goes to check on the octokittens. She counts the seconds it takes for them to devour him. 11.7. She considers testing if the octokittens can permanently kill her too, but there’s no point. She knows they won't. 

She keeps going. She doesn't know why. She is pulled by the need to know how their story will end.

Brian is just so tired in the end. He plays his last song, or maybe his first. He plays his beginning and then follows the same end, stepping out the airlock to float and freeze and die. She watches him go.    


She doesn't want to stay here, on this ship, her love who no longer recognizes her. And so she follows Ivy when she retires to a small library planet and spends a few centuries there. But when that system goes to war the library burns, and Ivy along with it.    


Nastya watches Tim’s final rampage. Watches him destroy stars and systems and civilizations. Watches him crash into a space station when he isn’t wearing his seatbelt. Watches him die. A ridiculous end for someone like Tim, but strangely fitting all the same.   


When she finally returns to the Aurora, Ashes has disappeared, but she doesn't know where they went.   


Raphaella is there, though. Bored of her experiments that are becoming routine, and wishing to learn something new. Nastya hides and watches, a ghost in the machine that was once her love. She watches her take a fragment of the ship and fling herself into a black hole. She’s not sure if she’s dead, or if she has simply found a way to finally learn something new. Either way, she’s gone. It doesn't matter. Nothing matters anymore.   


She finds the Toy Soldier on another nameless planet, sitting and waiting. It’s as lifeless as ever, but something seems different about it. It doesn't move when she approaches, or even when she orders it to get up, her voice rusty from disuse. It was never alive, so really it has only stopped pretending.    


She still doesn't know when Ashes has gone off to, so she waits. Waits as the stars go out, until they are all gone. And then she sees Ashes. They light a cigar and toss the match into a thing of gasoline. The resulting explosion is the final light in the universe, and then it is dark.   


Nastya floats in the void, unsure of what to do. The grief she did not feel for so long hits her, filling her heart with all the pain she has not felt. With all the grief and love and sorrow that has waited inside her. Pain that is sharp and hollow in her chest, twisting in her stomach and dragging tears from her eyes. She cries and cries, and when she has no more tears left, she simply waits. All alone.  _ Ha. Not even lost in a cosmos. Even that is gone now. _

She waits there in the void for....a long time. She doesn't know how long. Then, at last, she starts to sing. She’s in a vacuum, so even if there was another living thing left (which there isn't) it couldn't hear her.    


But that doesnt matter.    


She sings and sings, she sings every song she can remember her family writing, and then sings some of them again.    


And then, at last, she sings of her family’s deaths. Of Jonny and Ashes and Raphaella and Tim and Ivy and Marius and Brian and the Toy Soldier. She tells their stories, and then finally,  _ finally, _ when she has finished their songs and stories, she goes to her rest.    


And then they are all gone, and the story is over.


End file.
